Full Disclosure/Transparency

[James B White]

James, I see it all the time from published historians.

Then the standards of publishing are far lower than I imagine.

Admittedly, I don't read that much military history or secondary sources, but I would be genuinely surprised to know that there's any non-self-published history out there that uses only the ORs and doesn't also include in its footnotes or quotes or bibliography other sources such as soldiers' or citizens' letters, diaries or recollections outside the ORs. Could you give an example?

 

[godofredus]

Ah, the triumph of time. I can enjoy reading ACW history because new sources are continually being discovered and documented. But in my time the ACW was still current events, smothered by Gone with the Wind. When I started in 1960 you never heard about USCT, let alone women in the war, except for Clara Barton.
WW I was definitely current events - o lord I could have interviewed hundreds of WW I vets, except they didn't know anything?
And yet just yesterday I was talking with a friend about tragedies of the US Army and he mentioned the "great cover up" of Exercise Tiger, on Slapton Sands, where "hundreds" of GI's died. But there was never any cover-up. See: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq20-2.htm

 

[NedBaldwin]

Then the standards of publishing are far lower than I imagine.

Admittedly, I don't read that much military history or secondary sources, but I would be genuinely surprised to know that there's any non-self-published history out there that uses only the ORs and doesn't also include in its footnotes or quotes or bibliography other sources such as soldiers' or citizens' letters, diaries or recollections outside the ORs. Could you give an example?

I was responding to your statement "assuming that one uncorroborated account must be the gospel truth." The books I have in mind have extensive bibliographies. But within the book are individual events that are reported as fact based on a single uncorroborated account.

As an example, read a modern book about Shiloh you will see it stated as fact that Sherman said "There is no enemy closer than Corinth." This is based on a single uncorroborated account but is presented as gospel truth. I am sometimes a guest blogger on TOCWOC. Two years ago I wrote about that quote:
http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2012/05/07/take-your-****-quote-back-to-ohio/

Seems to me to that what is typical in publishing is if a writer finds an anecdote he likes it will be presented as fact regardless of whether there is any corroboration for it. They want entertaining stories to tell.

Unfortunately the name of the blog post doesnt make it past the censor. the **** stand for d, a, m, n respectively.

 

[Nathanb1]

Sam Hood's debunking of the Wiley Sword "Hood was on laudanum" story would be a good example. In his book, Mr. Hood showed clearly where the first mention came from--and how subsequent historians picked up the story and embellished and repeated it.

 

[Elennsar]

Sam Hood's debunking of the Wiley Sword "Hood was on laudanum" story would be a good example. In his book, Mr. Hood showed clearly where the first mention came from--and how subsequent historians picked up the story and embellished and repeated it.

The saddest part about that particular tale - and it can be said of others, but this works for example's sake - it is entirely credible that someone with a horrible arm injury and a missing leg would do something for the pain. Laudanum was used for pain in those days.

In absence of contradictory information, a historian stating that and leaving it there is credible, if as it turns out wrong.

When it gets to "And Hood was stoned out of his mind (not that he had much of a mind to begin with)" descriptions like Sword, we have a bigger problem than one-source referencing. And yet that happens with these sorts of stories regularly, particularly the ones with limited source material behind them.

 

[Pat Answer]

Is there a 'like' button for an entire thread?
Great points, everyone. Not much is truly "objective" about the way humans perceive and live life; we cannot expect our accounts of the past to be any different. I always appreciate when a historian just says: "This story survives because it's a good one, but who really knows..."

 

[diane]

Sam Hood's debunking of the Wiley Sword "Hood was on laudanum" story would be a good example. In his book, Mr. Hood showed clearly where the first mention came from--and how subsequent historians picked up the story and embellished and repeated it.

I've always had that story with a tablespoon of salt. And, like Charles I for Mr Dick, Nelson keeps getting into my posts. He was missing an arm and the amputation had been botched, seriously damaging a major nerve, along with a host of other injuries and ailments. Most likely, he was hooked good on laudanum. There's no way to know how much he really took since he was a sailor and it was available anywhere, and he took it himself. But, if he was whacked on opium, it sure didn't show much in his battles!

 

[JerseyBart]

History isn't written by the winners. It's written by winners, losers and observers who all have their own biases, agendas and views points. It is then interpreted by thousands upon thousands who have their own biases, agendas and view points. Good luck getting full disclosure and transparency that way.

 

[jgoodguy]

I was the recording secretary for a group I belong to for two years and was taught specifically how to write vaguely in the official book from my notes so that if any lawsuits came about, nothing specific was in the official book and my notes "disappeared."

I got one better than that. Group I belong to, the secretary did not take notes and made stuff up.

 

[Elennsar]

History isn't written by the winners. It's written by winners, losers and observers who all have their own biases, agendas and views points. It is then interpreted by thousands upon thousands who have their own biases, agendas and view points. Good luck getting full disclosure and transparency that way.

And sometimes there's just honest error. By those at the time, those later, and our own efforts in reading here and now.

If you want 100% accuracy, you have to achieve omniscience.

 

[diane]

I got one better than that. Group I belong to, the secretary did not take notes and made stuff up.

My favorite is grant writers. Especially the one who got an $80,000 grant - asked for the accounting sheet, she filled it out $10,000 languages and arts; $5,000 travel expenses and salaries; $65,000 miscellaneous. No receipts, cancelled checks, reports, or anything else. Submitted it to the grant foundation and...no problema! Free money...gotta love it!

 

[James B White]

I was responding to your statement "assuming that one uncorroborated account must be the gospel truth." The books I have in mind have extensive bibliographies. But within the book are individual events that are reported as fact based on a single uncorroborated account.

As an example, read a modern book about Shiloh you will see it stated as fact that Sherman said "There is no enemy closer than Corinth." This is based on a single uncorroborated account but is presented as gospel truth. I am sometimes a guest blogger on TOCWOC. Two years ago I wrote about that quote:
http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2012/05/07/take-your-****-quote-back-to-ohio/

Seems to me to that what is typical in publishing is if a writer finds an anecdote he likes it will be presented as fact regardless of whether there is any corroboration for it. They want entertaining stories to tell.

Unfortunately the name of the blog post doesnt make it past the censor. the **** stand for d, a, m, n respectively.

Okay, I see what you're saying. I googled the phrase and here's a good example: http://books.google.com/books?id=dS...7&dq="There+is+no+enemy+closer+than+Corinth."

I don't know the solution to things like that. If history is to be written in narrative form, at some point an author needs to make a decision what's accurate, and then write events as if they happened that way. The problem is that one can never be 100% certain what actually happened, yet when written as narrative, it all will sound as if it's endorsed by the author 100%, even though the author may actually only be somewhere between 50 and 100 percent. For very iffy things, an author may add a disclaimer, but too many disclaimers or discussions of alternatives make the narrative unreadable and turn it into a discussion about competing sources instead.

That's why I tend to avoid secondary sources, because it's a quick and painless way to absorb the general sweep of what happened, but one really needs to trace the data back through the footnotes to get a sense of what data they're based on if one is going to endorse the facts within them oneself.

But in writing secondary sources, how does one avoid the problem? Ideally, everyone would do all the research themselves on anything they were interested in and come up with their own conclusions based on the raw data available, without any intermediary interpretation, but in real life, that's not how people like to consume history.

 

[Pat Answer]

But in writing secondary sources, how does one avoid the problem? Ideally, everyone would do all the research themselves on anything they were interested in and come up with their own conclusions based on the raw data available, without any intermediary interpretation, but in real life, that's not how people like to consume history.

Good point. The historian probably shouldn't bother trying to "avoid" the tension between research and readability. Maybe, use the phrase "According to one account,..." a lot in the narrative and save the historiography questions for the appendix or the bibliographical essay?

 

[AndyHall]

Good point. The historian probably shouldn't bother trying to "avoid" the tension between research and readability. Maybe, use the phrase "According to one account,..." a lot in the narrative and save the historiography questions for the appendix or the bibliographical essay?

That's one way to do it. There are obviously some accounts or anecdotes that are so sketchy or dubious that they should be avoided altogether. But there are others that can't be independently corroborated but still fit within what's generally known about the subject. For those, the writer can introduce them with phrases like, "Smith later recalled that. . ." or "one soldier wrote home to say. . ." That flags the isolated nature of the source for the careful reader, and it's an open way of dealing with those cases.

Added: As a practical example, in the blockade running book I had an incident for which there were two sources: (1) the Union ship commander's report from the ORN, written the day after, and (2) the Confederate ship master's account, as told months later to a third party, and recorded in that person's memoir almost thirty years later. Both accounts agreed on the basic sequence of events, so there's little doubt about what happened, but the version from the later memoir had lots of additional (and vivid) detail. In the end I relied mainly on the report from the ORN, because it was written simultaneously with the event, and by someone who was an actual participant. It's a judgment call.

 

[NedBaldwin]

Great response.

As long as history is packaged as narrative, this is going to be an issue. One way to address it is what Pat said -- a healthy use of qualifiers to indicate the way the anecdote is known. So instead of 'Sherman said...' it would be 'years later Dawes claimed that Sherman said..' but than can get unwieldy.

Personally I would prefer less-narrative, more-analytical books and I like to see more up front discussion of the process of how varied sources are distilled into understanding of events.

One of my favorite pieces of history recently was an essay Brooks Simpson called 'What Happened on Orchard Knob' that was part of the collection called The Chattanooga Campaign. The primary sources have conflicting accounts of what took place there Rather than picking a version and telling a narrative, Simpson discusses the sources -- when they were written, by whom, what do they disagree about, where do they agreed etc.

Okay, I see what you're saying. I googled the phrase and here's a good example: http://books.google.com/books?id=dSYuNXmZjFwC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq="There is no enemy closer than Corinth."

I don't know the solution to things like that. If history is to be written in narrative form, at some point an author needs to make a decision what's accurate, and then write events as if they happened that way. The problem is that one can never be 100% certain what actually happened, yet when written as narrative, it all will sound as if it's endorsed by the author 100%, even though the author may actually only be somewhere between 50 and 100 percent. For very iffy things, an author may add a disclaimer, but too many disclaimers or discussions of alternatives make the narrative unreadable and turn it into a discussion about competing sources instead.

That's why I tend to avoid secondary sources, because it's a quick and painless way to absorb the general sweep of what happened, but one really needs to trace the data back through the footnotes to get a sense of what data they're based on if one is going to endorse the facts within them oneself.

But in writing secondary sources, how does one avoid the problem? Ideally, everyone would do all the research themselves on anything they were interested in and come up with their own conclusions based on the raw data available, without any intermediary interpretation, but in real life, that's not how people like to consume history.

 

[TerryB]

Wheeler was often wrong about dates, but a lot of his reports are also self-serving. Not unusual in the OR. I also believe that Gen. W.W. Mackall destroyed records to cover up the Nickajack Gap incident of April 23, 1864. So many of these records from the CS side are missing and Mackall was the only person who would have had access to all of them. Wheeler's whitewashing note to Mackall's ADC Lt Thomas Mackall (the general's nephew) survived because it was in his own order book. Unfortunately, there are no real details in it.

 

[Pat Answer]

Personally I would prefer less-narrative, more-analytical books and I like to see more up front discussion of the process of how varied sources are distilled into understanding of events.

And this makes perfect sense for anyone who is well past the basics. But was this always your preference? What book "got you started" and what did you like most about it?

One of my favorite pieces of history recently was an essay Brooks Simpson called 'What Happened on Orchard Knob' that was part of the collection called The Chattanooga Campaign. The primary sources have conflicting accounts of what took place there Rather than picking a version and telling a narrative, Simpson discusses the sources -- when they were written, by whom, what do they disagree about, where do they agreed etc.

This looks interesting. Is there a link for this?

 

[NedBaldwin]

And this makes perfect sense for anyone who is well past the basics. But was this always your preference? What book "got you started" and what did you like most about it?

Great questions that i'm not sure of the answers to.

This looks interesting. Is there a link for this?

This is the book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009CA9HW6/?tag=civilwartalkc-20


http://books.google.com/books?id=RZ...ks simpson what happened orchard knob&f=false

Its a collection of essays by different authors, some better than others.